Houston: Astronauts on the shuttle Atlantis packed up gear and checked out their spacecraft on Tuesday as they prepared to come home from their 11-day mission to the International Space Station.
NASA on Tuesday postponed the landing of the by a day, partly because of poor weather forecast for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA also wanted extra time to review tapes showing an unidentified object flying out of the shuttle's cargo bay.
Atlantis and its six-member crew are now scheduled to land in Florida on Thursday at 0622 hours EDT, one day later than planned.
In the midst of preparations, they took part in a three-way conference call with their counterparts on the station and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
NASA said tests of the shuttle's flight controls and steering jets turned up no problems, which followed the good news that Atlantis' heat shield appears fit for the fiery return through Earth's atmosphere.
In the conference call, which NASA said may have been the first time three orbiting spaceships had spoken on a shared radio link, the space travelers joked and chatted in a sometimes awkward 10-minute conversation.
"It's a little crowded in the sky this morning," said station astronaut Jeff Williams.
"We were wondering if we had to hire some more air traffic controllers for the increased traffic up here," US astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria replied from the Soyuz.
Atlantis is headed home after a week-long stay at the space station, while Soyuz is en route to the outpost after launching from Kazakhstan on Monday.
Atlantis launched September 9 from Florida carrying a $ 372 million solar power unit and truss structure that its crew installed on the space station.
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